


And all we need of hell (The "Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead" Remix)

by rthstewart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Severus can’t let go, Ginny helps him along</p>
            </blockquote>





	And all we need of hell (The "Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead" Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perverse_idyll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perverse_idyll/gifts).
  * Inspired by [New Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/132067) by [perverse_idyll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perverse_idyll/pseuds/perverse_idyll). 



> My life closed twice before its close;  
> It yet remains to see  
> If Immortality unveil  
> A third event to me  
> So huge, so hopeless to conceive,  
> As these that twice befell.  
> Parting is all we know of heaven,  
> And all we need of hell.
> 
> Emily Dickinson, _Parting_
> 
> “Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead” from Adele’s _Someone Like You_

ooOOoo

Once a year Severus sought out Harry Potter. On the anniversary of his death, his spirit materialised inside the walls of Godric's Hollow.

He didn't come to haunt. He wasn't bent on revenge. The blood he'd spilled in the Shrieking Shack didn't bind him. No debt or last-minute sin forced him to return to the living world. It was entirely of his own free will that he paid the boy these spectral visits. No one but Severus knew of them, and when he departed each year he left no trace behind.

Or so he thought.

When death passes, it always leaves a mark on the living.

ooOOoo

The year before, like every year since he had died, on the day he died, a compulsion drew Severus from beyond the veil. Once inside Godric’s Hollow, Severus moved as he had in life, gliding through the halls to Potter’s bedroom. Last year had been exquisite. As the boy slept next to his pregnant wife, Severus indulged in what he hated himself for hungering. He had touched the little beast, caressed his scar, kissed the sleeping lips, and tousled the sloppy fringe of hair. Finally, deliciously, Severus had stretched alongside Harry in his connubial bed and tucked his face into the nape of the boy’s messy hair. The brat had woken briefly to pet the swelling woman next to him in the bed. Then, the boy had moved away from his wife and into Severus’ embrace. They had twined fingers and snugged against each other, corporeal to spectral. Harry had left the woman and come into his arms.

When the boy, his wife, and their not yet born son woke the next morning, Severus drew back and faded behind the veil like the smoke of a gutted candle.

So now, a year later, he materialised again in the boy’s house, drawn by the same sorrow, fury, and things forbidden that he felt only on the day he died.

The house was dark and very quiet. Severus glided noiselessly down the upstairs hallway and past the silent nursery. Perhaps the brood had died.

Confronted with the closed bedroom door, he hesitated, smirked, then moved into the door.

And was violently tossed out with the force of a ball exploding from a cannon. The bang rattled the windows and shook the walls. Severus hurtled down the hall and landed in the corner in a flapping, tangled heap. Darkness turned to disorienting day as the overhead lights flashed on. He struggled to right himself, trying to flee from this bright light and loud noise.

But when he tried to melt away it was like poison gas trapped in a glass jar. He strained against foreign boundaries and sprang back with a sharp cry.

_It hurt._

How could he hurt? He was dead. There should be no physical pain, only greed, desire, and longing in his annual, ethereal trespass of Harry Potter.

“Back again, Severus?”

The wife stood over him, her wand pointed straight at him. One of her spawn rested on her hip, secure in the crook of her free arm. The thing had an obscene, gummy grimace on its ghastly face.

_The little rat had Lily’s eyes._

Severus struggled to rise and cried out again. When he moved, the pain seared throughout his being just as an expertly cast Cruciatus once had.

He lay on the filthy Muggle carpet, gasping like a dying fish when he shouldn’t even need to do so. The dead did not need air yet now it seemed imperative. The iron bands around his spectral form squeezed every laboured breath out of him.

“It’s a binding spell, obviously,” the wife said in a cold voice.

He opened his mouth and spat out, “Where?”

“Where is Harry? I told him the baby was sick. So, he took James to my Mum’s.”

She bounced the brat, who looked perfectly healthy, but the wand in her hand never faltered. Grudgingly, he couldn’t fault her defence even though he posed no threat to her. Ghosts fed on fear and longing. This fierce witch had neither and was skilled enough to bind a ghost -- not a spell he had ever seen cast successfully before.

He flailed on the floor in his invisible prison though movement was agony and he surely looked like a pale, pathetic bat snared in a net. “How?” he managed, though every word was another sharp agony.

“After your haunting last year, I’d had enough. I warded the bedroom. I thought of warding the whole house, but I wanted to speak to you, first.” She paused. “And the blow-back when you tried to cross the ward might have been enough to take out the whole street.”

“You trapped me,” Severus gritted out.

“Which you brought upon yourself by invading our home,” she replied. “Repeatedly.”

Deep revulsion welled within him and he remembered the taste of bile and blood in his mouth. He still could not move. “You knew?”

She snorted, her look of disgust exceeded only by his own. “Of course I knew, Severus. I’ve known for years. I know when death walks by me. I carried Voldemort in my head and soul for almost a year.”

Even still, he winced at the defiant way she contemptuously flung out the Dark Lord’s name.

“Do you think I wouldn’t notice when one bearing his mark hovers over my bed and paws my sleeping husband?”

As her voice hiked in anger and her colour rose, the larva clinging to her looked up and mewled with worry. “It’s alright luv,” she cooed, though her eyes and wand were trained on his shaking, writhing worm of a ghost crawling on the carpet. “Mummy isn’t angry at you.”

She took a deep breath. “I tried, I did, to be forgiving, to make allowances for something you both needed. But last year, you crossed more than the veil when you came into our home. Your love for Lily and hate for her husband twisted into a perverse obsession with Harry. I realised that you would _never_ stop unless I made you.”

“How can you know that?” he demanded. The burning effort to speak felt like a shout and sounded like a whimper. Severus didn’t know if she was right, but the witch might not be wrong. He pushed again against the invisible bindings and hissed in pain.

“I know because you told me, Severus.”

He stared at her. He’d not haunted her, he had never appeared before this broodmare with a wand that did not waver. “I’d never waste effort on Weasley scum.”

“As charming in death as in life, aren’t you?” The dog on her hip gurgled and stuffed a fist in his drooling mouth. “I went to Hogwarts and spoke to your portrait.”

“Portrait?” he repeated, dumbfounded. “I have no portrait.”

The witch snorted derisively, which made the goblin at her side look up with happy eyes and burble with glee. “You are a former Headmaster who, as much as you hated us all, still managed to protect us from the Carrows. Harry made sure your portrait was hung. I spoke to it, several times, about these annual hauntings of yours.” An ironic smile formed on her face. “You’re disgusted by your own behavior and lack of restraint.”

“Undoubtedly,” Severus managed. Of course his priggish portrait would condemn him.  His portrait self was surely jealous of what his spectral self had dared to do and so would punish him by helping this witch stop it.

“You were very plain with me, Severus. You can’t help it, this compulsion for Harry, and it’s wrong.”

“Spare me the lecture,” he snarled. “This is beyond your feeble understanding.”

She swayed a little, back and forth, and the thing attached to her cackled with glee. “But I _do_ understand, Severus. Why do you think I allowed it for so long? I was obsessed with him once, too. _When I was_ _twelve_.”

The pity in her face was worse than the anger.

The witch shifted her hip in his direction and offered the spawn for his inspection. He clenched his teeth and tried to close his eyes, but could not avoid them – squirming away from the revolting sight hurt too much.

“This is your namesake, Albus Severus.” The baby squirmed and happily flapped his hands about, recognizing his, _their_ , name. “I understand he has his grandmother’s eyes. He’s a wonderful boy, very cheerful, very thoughtful, and, as Harry repeats all the time, he’s named after two of the greatest Headmasters Hogwarts ever had.”

The green-eyed thing stared at him, mouth agape and blew spit bubbles. It was so fitting that the spawn was squashed, pale-faced, and smelly.

Severus knew some reprieves were worth the painful price they exacted. Needles pierced his body; he cried out and then bit down so hard it would have drawn blood if he could bleed. But he was finally able to look away and not stare at the loved and cherished baby that bore his name.

“Harry named our son after you; he made sure your portrait hung in honour at Hogwarts. He’s worked to clear your name and to get that Order of Merlin awarded that he knew you wanted so much. He’s made sure that the truth of your sacrifice and your contributions are known. He’s done this even though you abused and bullied him _for years_.” The witch’s voice hiked to an icy fury that any sane, living person should fear. “And this is how you repay Harry’s compassion?"

“He always was a fool.”

“Obviously, since you are plainly not worth a Knut’s effort.”

Albus Severus babbled and spit and a fond smile tugged at her lips before her face settled again to flint. “Know this, Severus. As much contempt as you have for Harry’s compassion, my respect for it is the only thing that stands between you and a very special hell.”

It cost him dearly in pain and the last dregs of self-respect but he managed a sneering, gasping laugh. “What can you do to me? I’m already dead, witch.’

“Yes, and you are, for the moment, free to harass _my_ husband and _my_ family.” He stared down the shaft of her wand; she held it like a knife. “But with a few words I can bind you to the place you died.”

 _Phatasma Incarero._ It was the spell that had bound Moaning Myrtle to Hogwarts.  It was very difficult and even more rare.  Staring at the witch and her steady wand, he knew she had the power to perform it.  His portrait might have even told this Weasley bitch how to do it. 

He sucked in a terrified, searing breath.

She nodded with vicious, smug satisfaction. “That’s right, Severus. You’d be trapped at the Shrieking Shack, days and nights without end, until you finally fade to nothing. I understand from your portrait this would be, as the saying goes, a fate worse than death for you.”

For the first time in his miserable life and death, Severus felt true, wrenching fear. The Shrieking Shack was the place of devastating humiliation, suffered at the hands of the detestable Black and Lupin. It was where the insufferably arrogant Granger had disarmed him. Where he had died, in bitter agony.

Severus had not thought it was possible to hate himself more.

She stepped forward, wand ready. He cowered and raised his hands to shield himself from damnation and the fury of the witch.

“Only respect for Harry stops me from binding you now. Never haunt us again, Severus Snape, or you _will_ regret it, _forever_.”

This was no empty threat; it was _a promise._

The witch’s forehead knit with concentration and she flicked her wand. She was taking no chances – it was a voiceless spell. Suddenly he was free; air was again something he could move through and not need.

“Go.”

He floated up and tested his freedom – his hand easily went through the wall. The baby giggled.

“Your life was miserable, Severus. You’re a hero, now. You’re free. But if you can’t let go of Harry, I’ll make you regret the day you died and every day you lived.”

In the morning, when sunlight flamed over Godric’s Hollow and Albus Severus kicked and his parents marveled at their son's sudden return to health, it was as if no one else had ever been there at all.

 

ooOOoo

 

Thanks to perverse_idyll for a great prompt!

“Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,” from Adele’s [Someone Like You](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/adele/someonelikeyou.html),

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited  
But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it.  
I'd hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded  
That for me it isn't over.  
  
Never mind, I'll find someone like you  
I wish nothing but the best for you too  
Don't forget me, I beg  
I remember you said,  
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."


End file.
